


Better Than Doing Nothing

by lirin



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: 1940ish, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-22
Updated: 2020-09-22
Packaged: 2021-03-08 00:35:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,612
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26596876
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lirin/pseuds/lirin
Summary: War is coming, but it's not here yet, and so Peggy and Steve each decide to go to college first.
Relationships: Peggy Carter/Steve Rogers
Comments: 3
Kudos: 32
Collections: Fandom Giftbox 2020





	Better Than Doing Nothing

**Author's Note:**

  * For [vintagelavenderskies](https://archiveofourown.org/users/vintagelavenderskies/gifts).



War is coming.

Back home, it's already arrived. Back home, that is, in England, which—as Mum keeps reminding Peggy—isn't their home anymore.

Home is New York now, and though most people admit that the United States will probably have to declare war on someone sooner or later, for now they're just trying to keep a semblance of normality to their lives. For Mum, that means absolutely insisting that her daughter sign up for college.

"It's either that, or find a nice man and get married," Mum says. "I don't want you just getting some secretarial job when you have the opportunity to do so much more. When I was a girl, I didn't have the opportunity to go to college."

Peggy shrugs. She's pretty sure that whatever she chooses, the war will arrive to disrupt it soon enough. And college is much less permanent than marriage. She fills out an application to Barnard.

***

War is coming.

Half of Europe is at war. Steve's pretty sure the U.S. will have to join in eventually. And when it does, he wants to fight.

But that is then and now is now. And right now, he has an art scholarship to Columbia sitting on his desk.

"You can't pass up a full scholarship," Bucky tells him, sitting on the side of Steve's bed (the only other piece of furniture in the room) and leaning his boots up on the desk. "What would you do otherwise, get a job at the five-and-dime? Think of this as them paying you to learn more about art."

Steve shrugs. He supposes he might as well get a few months, maybe a year of education—but he's quitting as soon as the U.S. declares war.

***

Barnard is nice enough. Peggy's decided to major in mathematics—she has her eye on code-breaking, once the war starts. This means that she takes most of her classes across the street at Columbia, since the women's college's science offerings are still limited.

There's mostly men in her classes. Some of them whisper behind her back about how a dame's brain isn't suited to this sort of thing. Others offer to let her sit next to them, but accompany the gesture with salacious grins that hint they might have more than that in mind. Peggy ignores them all. She sits in the front row, and she takes copious notes, and she always has the answer when she's called on. She also makes sure her lipstick is always perfect and her hats always just so: she doesn't want to disguise the fact that she's a woman; she wants them all to be very aware that she is a woman and she belongs here.

After the results for the first exam are posted, many more of her fellow students suddenly express interest in befriending her. She accepts some of the better students' offers to study together, but quickly realizes that she gets more done without them. She goes back to studying on her own.

***

Columbia is nice enough. Buck was right; the scholarship is basically like getting paid to learn more about art. And Steve's learning a lot. He always had an eye for this sort of stuff, but the teachers show him how to push past what comes naturally to create something even stronger. He learns how to look at his work with new eyes, and gets to try many different media. (He decides pencil is still his favorite, though getting his hands dirty for clay sculpture is more fun than he expected.)

About halfway through his first semester, his drawing professor sends the class out to the quad to sketch passersby—not full drawings, just exploring the shape of their heads and features, and how much variety there can be within the same basic shape. Steve follows the instructions at first, but when he spots a particularly beautiful woman he can't help but expand the sketch into a fuller drawing.

She looks over at him, and Steve's pretty sure she's noticed him staring. He ducks his head quickly; his motivations for staring could too easily be misconstrued and he doesn't want to make a lady uncomfortable. He bends over his sketchbook and adds a few more pencil strokes—

"What are you doing?" Steve jumps. She's standing right behind him, looking over his shoulder. She has a lovely voice, with a British accent. "Oh, are you an art student?"

"I am," Steve says. "I hope you don't mind my sketching you. It's an assignment."

"Oh, I don't mind at all," she says, still looking over his shoulder. "You have a good eye. I can recognize several of the people you've drawn despite the incompleteness, and I imagine I'd recognize more if I knew more people around here." She walks around to the front of the bench he's sitting on and takes a seat next to him, crossing her legs at the ankles. (She has very nice legs.) "What sort of art do you do when it's your own choice, and not an assignment?"

"Much like this, actually," Steve tells her. "I sketch things I see and people I meet in the course of the day. The classes here have given me the opportunity to try media I hadn't used before, but I think my favorite way of creating art is just me, the paper, and a pencil."

She raises an eyebrow, and Steve is struck by a sudden desire to erase the expression on his half-finished drawing of her and start fresh. Or just to draw her a second time, and a third, and on until he's captured as many of the possible appearances of her face as he can. "Is that what you'd like to do when you graduate?" she asks. "Just keep sketching people?"

Steve shrugs, and absolutely doesn't mention how right now he just wants to keep sketching her for the rest of his life. "Unfortunately I don't think that would pay the bills," he says. "But it seems rather silly to talk about graduating at a time like this, don't you think? With everything going on in Europe, I don't see how it won't spill over here sooner or later—probably sooner, and definitely before I manage to finish a four-year art degree. Right now I'm just killing time until I can join up. If I'm still around by the end of the war, well, then I can think about my plans more then."

***

Most of the men that Peggy's met around campus wish for their scholastic endeavors to keep them out of the war. When the draft is instituted—which seems a foregone conclusion once war begins, and it's already certain that there will be a war—students won't be at the bottom of the list but they hope they won't be at the top of it either.

Her new artist friend has his priorities in a different order, and Peggy thinks she likes that. She holds out a hand to him. "I'm Peggy, by the way," she says.

"Steve Rogers, ma'am," he says, holding out a nice hand with long fingers, though they're all a bit graphite-smudged. He squeezes her hand firmly but not painfully. "It's nice to meet you."

"Likewise. What do you hope to do in the war?"

"Whatever they need me to do," Steve says. "I expect I'll just enlist as a private and see where they want me. But I hope it's somewhere overseas where I can actually go up against the enemy. I don't want to end up stuck in a New York office drawing propaganda or illustrating training manuals for the duration of the war."

"Me too," Peggy says, then laughs. "Well, at least I know they wouldn't have me do any art, because if there's one thing I can't do to save my life, it's drawing. But I imagine when the war comes, I and my fellow maths students will be locked up in an assortment of dreary windowless university classrooms for the duration of the war, making calculations and never coming anywhere near the enemy."

"We're neither of us cut out to be your typical soldier, are we?" He looks at her almost hesitantly. "If it was up to you, if you could do anything at all to help the war effort, what would you want to do?"

"A mission behind enemy lines," Peggy says promptly. "Something where you're not just another cog in the machine, where your brains and your bravery are the only things standing between success and failure."

Steve grins, and flips his sketchbook closed. "Me too," he says. "Too bad it's not our choice. But I'm going to enlist regardless, as soon as I can. Even doing something small is better than doing nothing at all."

Peggy stretches her legs out in front of her, uncrossing and recrossing them. "I agree," she says. "And I'll take that windowless room if that's all I can have."

"But you're not there yet," Steve says. "And neither am I. If we're both just waiting for the war to start..."

He trails off, but Peggy has an idea where he was headed with the comment. "Waiting doesn't have to be a solitary activity," she says.

"Have you been to the malt shop by the library?" Steve asks. He stands up and holds out a hand to help her up.

Peggy doesn't need the help, but she takes his hand anyway. "I have, actually, but I wouldn't mind going there again."

"Well then, why don't we go wait for the war," Steve says.

"It's certainly better than doing nothing at all," Peggy says, and follows him across the quad.


End file.
